“... the school should be an appendage of the family state, and modeled on its primary principle, which is, to train the ignorant and weak by self-sacrificing labor and love; and to bestow the most on the weakest, the most undeveloped, and the most sinful.”—Catherine E. Beecher (18001878)

“As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all resolute and honest dealing with what, after all, must be every healthy literatures elementary materials.”—H.L. (Henry Lewis)

“The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legible characters in every quarter of the Old World, and but today, perchance, a new coin is dug up whose inscription repeats and confirms their fame. Some Judæa Capta, with a woman mourning under a palm tree, with silent argument and demonstration confirms the pages of history.”—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)

“What shall he have that killed the deer?His leather skin and horns to wear.Then sing him home.Take thou no scorn to wear the horn,It was a crest ere thou wast born;Thy fathers father wore it,And thy father bore it.The horn, the horn, the lusty hornIs not a thing to laugh to scorn.”—William Shakespeare (15641616)